


A Tenancy

by Amberdreams, De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 16:13:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3215408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberdreams/pseuds/Amberdreams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam has faerie hair pets that eat time. Go figure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tenancy

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the RBB 2015, for the gorgeous art by Amberdreams.
> 
> The fic is gen in that there is no pairing, but there are retrospective mentions of Sam/Amelia and a brief Sam/OMC encounter.
> 
> Many thanks to Snickfic for the helpful beta. 
> 
> Christina Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, e.e. cummings, W. B. Yeats, and Edward Lear all lost lines to various degrees of faerie mangling. Title from a James Merrill Poem.

The nights when he can’t sleep (there are a lot of those) or maybe the nights when he can (those happen, too), Sam explores the bunker. For all he’s been caught in it like a rat in a trap, for all he’s seen the lights turn red, for all it’s not home, Sam does appreciate this place, really. He does. He likes the way the bunker opens up paths for him, the way it’s never the same. It’s like when Dad dropped him off at the library when he was a little kid, after Dean started school. They had story hours or something, but Sam used to wander off, even it was just behind a low case of encyclopedias at the back of the single room. (Most of the libraries were small and dingy, books with frayed spines and loose covers and and yellowing tape on the crinkled plastic that was supposed to protect them; the batcave special collection is quite a step up in the world.) Anyway. Sam would wander away from the group, from the nice story hour ladies, just far enough to get lost, even if it was just at the back of the room. Then he’d feel safe. One of the libraries had a guinea pig in a cage. One even had a dog, the librarian’s, probably. It might have been then that the possibility took root in Sam, the chance that he’ll turn a corner and find a dog. 

Tonight (asleep? awake?) Sam stands looking off down three corridors. He hasn’t seen this place before, any of the times he’s gone exploring. One branch is broad and smooth and straight, one is steep and narrow and climbs up, but he takes the third one, the one that turns a corner. Maybe because Jess used to quote Anne of Green Gables at him, all about what’s around the bend in the road. An ugly death, most likely. It had been for Jess. But right now Sam may be asleep, he may have dozed off in a beanbag chair with a torn book in one of the libraries Dad dropped him off at. There’s a light around the corner and it’s not red. It’s Jess’s bend in the road, not the dead end Sam had been for her, blood and fire. If Dean’s there he’ll be cleaning the guns and whistling, and there won’t be anything in his eyes, no evasion or embarrassment or murder. There won’t be a Mark on his arm.

So Sam walks down the corridor with a bend in it and he turns the corner and there’s a light there. It’s not red or ominous or flickering flame. It’s coming from a shop window, and there’s one of those old-fashioned twisting cylinders they have outside of barber shops, red, white, and blue. 

A bell jingles when he opens the door. Now he’s not sure if it’s a barber shop or a pet shop. There are chairs like a barber shop, jars of combs and scissors in that disinfectant fluid stuff, sinks, a long wall of mirrors, shroud-like aprons. But the opposite wall is full of cages, and the air is a strange mix of synthetic shampoo and rainforest and a musty rankness. The cacophony of shrieks and hisses, the skitter of claws and the scurry of paws, it all makes the proprietor’s voice kind of hard to hear.

“You’d be here for a trim, then?” is what Sam thinks he’s saying. “Or maybe more of a radical restyling. It’s a good way to start, if you’re out to change your life. You can walk out of here a whole new you.”

That’s pretty much the last thing Sam wants. 

“No, thanks,” he says. “I’ll just, uh, can I look . . .” he wanders over to the wall of cages and glass tanks and stares into them. It’s pretty fascinating. One has a tiny dragon thing with three heads. Another has a pair of birds that look like parrots with feathered manes . One is full of flickering flames, with spiny-backed lizards running through them in colors like fall foliage. One has a fat white cat that looks perfectly ordinary, glossy and bored. Some of the creatures have human faces, arms and legs and torsos and trousers and hats, little gnomes with tools at their belts. But when they look at him their eyes are as bright and incurious as the cat’s. 

Sam leans closer, trying to examine a bright-eyed thing like a stick insect, bristling with clumps of leaves and twiggy hands. Something tugs at his scalp. One of the birds has stretched a long beak out of its cage and it’s yanking his hair.

“Ow,” says Sam. Then he feels guilty. “It’s OK,” he says to the bird.

“She’s taken a fancy,” says the barber. “She doesn’t usually care for strangers. Maybe you’d like her out of the cage to improve the acquaintance?”

“I’m not really in the market for a pet these days,” says Sam.

It’s not time to go looking for a pet, not now, when they’re finally settling, settling into whatever is left. Maybe it’s love. Anyway, it’s what they’ve got. Sam always wanted a dog. He had one, a couple of times. But now it’s just this ugly mutt hellhound, family, that’s been squatting on his nonexistent doorstep all his life. He might as well feed it, scratch its ears, let it drool on him and maul him and kill for him. And he’ll go hunting in the woods for it, too, if it gets hungry. At least it’s company. And it’s human.

“We heard you hit a dog,” says the barber. “Careless, that.” Sam stiffens.

“How do you know about me?” he says. 

“Ah,” says the proprietor. “Well, your presence here is not what you’d call a total coincidence. It so happens we’ve a proposition for you.”

Sam turns and narrows his eyes at the barber. The figure blurs, recondenses. It’s familiar. Illusion, still, probably, but this time it’s an illusion Sam’s seen before.

“You’re fae,” he says, “you’re the leprechaun from the UFO town. Get the hell out. Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.”

“No?” says the Leprechaun. “Not a cat to purr for you, warm, glossy fur for you? Songbird to sing for you? No serpent wise, patterned with truth and lies? No bees in their hive? You’ve seen my pretty creatures. Don’t you care to buy?”

For a moment the whole room blurs and fractures around Sam. The barbershop florescents fade into a green tangle of light. The cages are gone. The branches and undergrowth rustle with movements, flash with wings. There are treasures just out of reach, squirrel hoards, bright knowing eyes, dense, structured combs. It’s all here somewhere, the things Sam wants, the things he needs to know. He takes a step forward. Then the spicy air tickles his nose and he sneezes. He stops and shuts his eyes.

“I know this one,” he says to the darkness behind his eyelids. “I give you a lock of hair, you sell me your wares, I waste away. No fucking thanks.”

“Unless your brother saves you.”

“No fucking thanks.” Sam repeats it with additional emphasis. Maybe the leprechaun is startled by the genuine, savage nausea Sam can bring to that idea these days. Anyway, the air around him switches back to to zoo/barbershop blend. It’s amazing how ordinary that seems.

“Not even an exotic orchid?” he says. “Well. Who knows upon what soil they feed their hungry, thirsty roots? There’d have to be something you can be wise about, to have lived as long as you have. You can open your eyes. I’m not really here in a goblin merchant capacity.”

“Then what the fuck was the point of that?” says Sam, opening his eyes and fixing them on the lumpy vinyl barber’s chairs. Though it’s not like they’re a talisman of reality just because they’re a less exotic illusion.

“A diversion,” says the leprechaun. “I don’t really enjoy discussing politics. I suspect you don’t either. If we’re going to snare your cooperation, one way or the other, we’ll need a tastier bait.”

“No way,” says Sam. “Never again. The answer is no.” 

“It’s true, yes hasn’t been your lucky word, has it? But I may have misspoken when I mentioned a proposition. Let’s call it a demand.”

The leprechaun looks less like crazy Wayne the UFO guy now, less like the doctor from Voyager. He looks alien and dangerous, all teeth and rules. But Sam knows enough fairy lore to know it’s all about the rules. 

“That’s not how it works,” says Sam. “No one here has bargained with you.”

“You did us an injury. We can negotiate reparations.”

“I banished you. The ritual was fair and square. You can’t go claiming reparations for that.” Really, they’re still hung up on that?

“Oh, we can. But we’re not. There’s another matter. Another incident in your busy life. You killed a god.” 

Several, actually, though it’s not an aspect of his life story Sam dwells on much. It’s surprisingly uninteresting, killing gods.

“And?” he says. Though _Which one?_ might be the more relevant question.

The barber — the leprechaun — sits down in one of the salon chairs and puts his feet up on the shelf, next to the combs in disinfectant. He’s still holding his scissors. Shiny silver scissors.

“Let me tell you something about fairyland,” he says. “We’re old. Older than your God and your devil, your friend in the pit. We don’t age, our bodies and our land never decay or die. Do you think it’s because we’re immortal? It would follow, wouldn’t it, by definition. But we don’t deal with that, either. Immortality. A crude concept. We share the universe with immortality and with death, with God and mortals, and we haven’t objected. It doesn’t matter to us. We live behind the scenes, in the cracks, on the other side of the coin. We come and go through the back doors. But we are bound by certain diplomatic relations.”

“Relations with whom?” Sam asks.

“With Death, of course,” says the leprechaun. “You know him, I believe. Tetchy, isn’t he? He doesn’t quite approve of us. But he stops by from time to time and eats our fruits, and he sets aside his claim on us, apart from due tribute of battle, as long as we keep certain agreements. Certain agreements that involve a third party. A third party you, busy mortal that you are, removed from the equation. And that’s not just bad for us. Things are starting to crack.” 

Casually, the leprechaun scrapes with his scissors at the exposed brick of the wall. A trickle of red and grey dust runs down, leaving a fine, black fissure. A large beetle — too large, surely, how could it fit through such a small space? — scuttles out in a dazzle of iridescent blue. It runs back and forth across the floor, frantic, waving feathery antennae, then launches in a buzz of humming bird wings straight at Sam’s face. He bats it away reflexively, too hard. It falls to the floor twitching and broken.

“The least you could do is put it out of its misery,” says the leprechaun, but Sam can’t. He can’t set his foot down on the creature, even as a kindness. The leprechaun sighs longsufferingly and snaps his fingers. The ruined beetle vanishes with a crackling pop and a smell like gunpowder. 

“You see,” says the leprechaun.

“Could you just tell me what the fuck this is about?” Losing one’s temper with faeries isn’t the wisest thing, but then, this may all be a dream. Losing one’s temper in dreams is often better than the other things that happen in dreams.

“Where was I?” says the leprechaun. “Ah, yes, Death. But there’s the other one we need to run sideways around if we’re not to walk head first into the wall like everyone else. Time. Time is but the stream we go a’ fishing in. But we had to give him a cast or two in our rivers in return.”

“Chronos,” says Sam. “You’re talking about Chronos?”

“Chronos,” the leprechaun confirms. 

“Chronos wasn’t some innocent victim,” says Sam. “He was killing people. He tried to kill Dean.”

“Guilt and innocence aren’t in the bargain. You’re not getting the point. That’s the problem with mortals, you don’t take time to listen. Did you hear a word I said? You think you were in trouble for letting that petty prince Lucifer out for a run? You’ve destabilized the balance, boyo. Time, Death, and Faerie. That’s not an adjustment you want disturbed.”

That seems all too likely to Sam, but at the same time he feels impatient. Yes, he’s fucked up the world, maybe more than once, and yes, he’s willing to do what he can to fix what he broke, but sometimes he’s busy with other stuff. It never ends, that’s the problem. Sam likes things that end. And it’s not like the Mark of Cain will just erase itself one night. Though maybe the faeries could help with that, if he does what they want.

“Tell me what you think I can do,” he says, “and why I should do it.” Dealing with faeries is tricky at best, but they do follow patterns. You can be OK if you if you work with that.

“As to the second, you owe us. You’re the one killed Chronos. Trust me, lad — or don’t, if you’re wise — when it comes to my people you’re better off owing us than having us owing you. We pay our debts in some unpleasant ways.”

“That’s why,” says Sam. “What about how? I can’t fix the structure of space-time or whatever it is.” Atonement is familiar, even seductive in its way, but it’s not going to be of interest to these creatures. 

“Ah. Well, in addition to being the one who upset the apple cart, you have certain characteristics that may help set it back on its wheels. Kismet, really. Though with us it’s more of a poetic justice. We don’t go in for Law, we just like laws. They’ll appreciate that you’re a lawyer, though it’s poor second to a bard.”

“I’m not . . .” Sam begins, then realizes that’s not the most relevant issue. Maybe in the dream he went to law school. _Who_ will like it? But that’s irrelevant, too. If this is about what he is, he wants no part in it. He knows well enough how far he’ll go to sweat the blood out, and maybe in faerieland they turn blood into honest water, but it never works. It’s never not stupid.

“You can stop right there,” he says. “There’s no deal. I won’t deal. None of that’s good for anyone, you included.” Dean included. Sam included. 

The leprechaun makes a _t’ch_ sound. “Don’t go getting on your high horse when you don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t go thinking you’re more interesting than you are just because you’re custom built. We could build something prettier ourselves, something that could sing for us.” He snips the air with the silver scissors, a faint, musical hiss. “We don’t want sulfured blood or an angel’s sculpted vessel. That coin is worthless. When we took your brother, it was for his pretty green eyes.”

Sam is afraid. He’s been in worse places, sure, but this is odd. Strange in a way Michael and Lucifer’s cosmic pettiness wasn’t. Whatever this creature wants of him, he thinks it will take it. He’s been changed before. It’s never into something rich and strange.

“We won’t use force,” the leprechaun answers his thoughts. “We are not mortals. And this is easy. This is neutral. Shouldn’t it delight you, to find you have gifts that can’t be used for good or evil? You earned them with mortal blood and mortal soul, you paid for this happy chance, but chance it is. There’s no destiny here.”

“What happy chance?” says Sam, “What qualities?” He’s backed up against the wall of cages. Small hands are holding him by the hair. There’s a whip-thin, scaled tail around his throat, blue and red and green and gold. Something tickles his hand. He doesn’t look down. 

“Time,” says the leprechaun. “Your times are out of joint. You lived twice at once. You’re an unnatural resource, boyo. You’re a mine.”

Sam can’t see the creatures, held against the cages as he is, but he remembers the gnome things with hammers and picks at their belts. He imagines them at work, tunnels and galleries, pit ponies and trains of carts to lug the ore. He understands now. It’s one of his fault lines, that warp where two sets of memories coexist. Mostly for him it’s a content issue, but there’s an unsettled feeling there, an energy that’s nothing to do with being Lucifer’s favorite toy or with letting Dean get turned. The faeries don’t want him, not the way angels and demons did. They just want to loot him for this accidental treasure, like killing someone for the gold fillings in their teeth.

“Let me go,” he says, sweating, tugging at the whip-thin loop of scales round his throat, “let me go.” Will Dean find his body here in the morning? Will there even be a body, is there even a here here? Will he be cracked open, somehow? And what if the Mark drives Dean against Faerie? That won’t end well.

The creatures are shrieking and cawing in their cages, rattling the bars. The leprechaun looks at Sam in what seems like genuine astonishment.

“Quiet your thoughts before you drive us all distracted,” he says. “Mab, but you’ve a morbid mind. We aren’t gods, or Leviathan. We’re not angels or demons. We want to live in the universe, not eat it.”

“Then what?” says Sam.

“Only humans crack open a landscape to take what they need. We’re after your living energies, not the marrow of your brain or bones. You, living, to foster living things for us, and to return them. That is all.”

“Living things?” says Sam, “you want me to adopt from your exotic pet shelter?” The creatures that were holding him have let go, and he can look at the rows of cages again. Yeah, some of them are cute and some are pretty cool, but they don’t look quite like you can buy them kibble or litter or take them out on a leash. And God knows what Dean will say, if this isn’t a dream. Dean doesn’t even want a dog. And he’s probably allergic to gnomes. “Look, can you please just explain to me, in small, mortal guy words, what the hell you’re talking about?”

“Mortal guy words,” says the leprechaun, “well, you certainly have a way with them. All right. Faerie’s a living thing, an ecosystem. But it doesn’t run on your standard biology and chemistry. One of the things it does work on is time. Time takes some strange shapes, where we are. Goes through some odd processes. Reproduction, digestion, art, who can tell the difference? Chronos was always ready to trade with us. We were his laboratory, in a way. He invested in us. New time, do you know how hard to obtain that is? And now we’re cut off. And Death, well. I can’t see what pleasure he gets out of good times or bad times or three-four time or party time or stands-the-church-clock-at-ten-to-three-and-is-there-honey-still-for-tea time or inside a black hole time, since all he ever seems to do with the stuff is measure it and cut it off, but to each his own kink. Anyway, he seemed to get some pleasure out of time-tasting. Just another form of high calorie junk food for him, I suppose. Pure time, like pure grease, without any nutrients attached.”

Sam tries to get some substance out of this sludge of metaphor.

“So Chronos traded you time,” he says, “basically, so you could develop it for him. And Death went for the exotic stuff you were producing and was willing to wave off the usual entropy tax and forego the normal method of getting time attached to lives. But your funding dried up when we ganked Chronos. Deservedly,” he adds.

“A crude but adequate model of a reality you’re never going to comprehend,” says the leprechaun. “The universe contains very, very few sources of naturally occurring new time. You’re one of them. We want to feed it back into our system and reestablish trade. Though perhaps that’s too economic an image. I told you already, we don’t mine or steal what we need. We must have creatures native to our realm to metabolize it, as it were, and return it. Three for us, to craft or breed it. Three for Death, to please him. Three to the memory of Time.”

At least they’re planning to farm him in an environmentally responsible way. 

“Nine creatures?” Sam asks.

“Nine creatures for nine weeks,” says the leprechaun. “Then to each their own and all as before.”

Sam looks at the gnomes, their nimble hands. They look like people. People living in him is not what he needs. When it comes to it, he’s also not keen on the talking birds and the fiery lizards and the cat.

“Are they people?” he asks.

“Was your dog a person? They’re pets, lad. And don’t take that the warm, fuzzy way. Little minds and wills and instincts that live in your house but aren’t yours. ”

“Sounds familiar,” says Sam. Though it sounds just different enough. Pets. People have pets. They don’t take over.

“A cliff full of coneys, you are,” agrees the leprechaun. “Or were. I daresay you like to think you’re retired. The last angel wasn’t so bad. A useless functionary like all his kind, but he did speak in blank verse.”

Sam can allow that Gadreel had redeeming characteristics, that he’d at least tried to work his way out from what he’d done, but he’s not getting up for giving him points for style.

“Are they going to live in my brain?” He can imagine it well enough, the places where his skull has never been sutured right, things coming and going through the cracks. “They’re not going to live in my brain.” It comes out only marginally more impressive in statement form. “They don’t get access. No building nests or digging holes in my memory. That’s off limits.”

“They don’t need to. They’ll be happier in your hair. They like to breathe the air and see what’s going on.” 

That sounds way too much like having lice.

“My _hair_?” says Sam, “my hair didn’t live in two times at once or whatever. It’s not me.” 

“Your hair is you exactly. Living and dead. Own and alien. Too long. Never argue metaphor with a faerie. That’s another thing we live on, and one with no god you can murder. They’ll live in your hair and make elflocks. The’ve no appetite for memories. Just for the static yours generate.”

Dean thinks Sam’s hair is Sam, too, but he’s less insufferable about it. There are a lot of things Sam is angry at Dean about, hot anger and cold revenge and sheer, undignified terror, all overlapping, but there’s things he can count on, too, ways Dean knows him. Speaking of Dean. He takes a deep breath. This is all very well, balance of the universe and all, but he and Dean have a focus here.

“OK,” he says, “I’ll do it. But I’ve got my own problems while I’m solving yours. Which I didn’t have to do; killing Chronos was the right call and I don’t owe shit for it. So maybe I can get something in return. You offered to help me once, when I was missing a soul. This time I want to get rid of something. Will you offer to help me again?”

“I’m not a Swiss Army Knife, boyo. The universe isn’t made up of tools for your every purpose.”

“You said you could get my soul out of the Cage. That’s a pretty fancy Swiss Army Knife.”

“Oh, I could have. We come and go as we please. The Cage is very deep, but it’s only force and distance. Angels don’t know how to set things at an angle.”

“Well, an angel set his Mark on Cain. And Cain passed it on to my brother. Can you get it off him?”

The leprechaun spits on the floor. It looks more ceremonial than rude.

“No and no and no,” he says. “we’re not making any bargain, boyo. Faerie cannot help and will not help and does not help with the things of Cain and Abel. The magic of murder is nothing to do with us. But you have said you will do what we asked. You’re held to that.”

Sam could go a couple of ways on this one. There’s a part of him that still thinks it can bargain. With the universe, if not Faerie. If he does this, surely he’ll collect from somewhere, get help with the Mark. Maybe from Death. But there’s also the part of him that wants to do this. Why? Has he got so accustomed to being inhabited that he’s leasing himself to the first comer? Rent boy; it’s an ugly thought. But it’s probably simpler. They’re offering him the chance to fix something. He can get hooked on that, he knows, as easily as the blood. His fix. The goblin merchants got him after all, with their choicest wares. _Come buy, come buy._ And it’s for him. He’s not the girl in the poem who got the goblin juices for her sister.

 

So there are nine of them. Very _Lord of the Rings_. Though Sam supposes he’s lucky. Even hobbits would make cumbersome hair accessories, and Black Riders would just be uncomfortable. 

This is after he’s awake and fairly convinced it wasn’t a dream. Or that it’s still a dream. But he’s back in his bed, not in those branching lower levels of the bunker that aren’t there when he’s awake.

There are nine of them. They blur a bit, and he’s never quite sure he has a clear inventory. There’s a lizard thing, certainly. It doesn’t breathe fire. Its scales shift rose and gold, and it has stubby, leathery, vestigial wings. The inside of its mouth and its triple-forked tongue are green as a green apple. Somehow it blends in. There are two birds. One is black like a crow. One is bright blue and yellow, like a parrot. They both have bristling manes of feathers that fan out when they’re irritated. They both talk. The gnomes (Sam thinks there are three of them), don’t, but they make things. He hears them at night, small clanks and taps and tinkerings, vaguely reassuring, like the sounds of Dean tending an engine or cleaning a gun. Mostly whatever they’re doing leaves no traces, but some mornings Sam finds curious objects on his desk and shelves, abstract sculptures like twisted, flowering vines or intertwined animal shapes in wood or silver. There’s a thing like a monkey that likes to braid Sam’s hair, a thing like a crab with powerful claws and a small forest of fronds and frills sprouting from its shell, and a round, furry thing he thinks Cas might like. It’s not a guinea pig, not exactly — it has hands and a furry, human-shaped face with big round cat’s eyes — but it’s endearing. Sometimes it will come down and settle on Sam’s shoulder while he works. It doesn’t purr, but when he strokes it it starts to hum discordantly, like it’s tuning up.

There’s no way they can all fit. But Sam guesses that if they eat time they can go sideways in space or something. Anyway, he can feel them there, a shifting tug and scurry when he moves. It seems to work, probably because they’re not real, even if they’re real. Things don’t have to be real to cause complications.

Dean can see faeries, of course. Sam remembers that on his way to breakfast the first day. If Dean can see faeries it stands to reason he can see the flora and fauna. It’s possible the leprechaun forgot about that. It’s also very possible that he remembered.

“Dude,” Dean says, “you have a fucking bird in your hair.”

The bird tilts its head and looks at Dean curiously.

“You killed your brother,” it says. “We buried him in the leaves.”

“Uh,” says Sam.

“You have a fucking delusional bird in your hair,” says Dean.

“If Dean had killed me I’d probably have noticed,” says Sam to the bird. “I’ve got a lot of experience with dying.”

“You made a blade. You slew. You flew up to hell. Him you thrust down to heaven.”

“A fucking delusional bird with a terrible sense of direction,” says Dean, but he’s fidgeting like he’s got a blade in his hand. There’s a quick sting of sparks along Sam’s scalp and a warning hiss like a cat’s, but it’s the lizard. The furry thing hasn’t stirred from its place just behind his ear. Dean seems not to have seen it yet.

“And a fucking lizard,” says Dean. “You’ve got a bird and a lizard in your hair. What the hell is going on here, Sam? Is the goddamn Mark giving me hallucinations, now?”

“I don’t think so,” says Sam. Most of what Dean’s scared of with the Mark he damn well should be, but it doesn’t seem like it’s giving him hallucinations. If this is a hallucination Sam’s pretty sure it’s all on him. He looks around, checking for disintegration. There’s a shift in his hair, a warm, furry body, the guinea pig thing. A tongue licks his ear. Sam feels a small, steadying rush of gratitude. If these are hallucinations, they’re good ones. They’re willing to stay outside and be warm, and if the damn birds are freaky conversationalists they’re still not like the bits of his own brain are. 

“OK,” says Dean. “So clearly we need some explanations here. And maybe a bottle of that prescription shampoo you get for lice.” He’s going for casual, but showing the whites of his eyes. One of the birds — the black, raven one — has hopped up to him. It’s tugging at a thread in his shirt. When it comes loose it starts laying it out on the table in a pattern of loops and arabesques and curves.

Sam explains. At least, he tells Dean what happened. At least, he tells Dean what he thinks happened. That’s surely enough hedging _at leasts_ to create some kind of safety zone. Not enough to stop Dean getting mad. Sam shouldn’t, in all candor, blame him. He’d protested enough himself. His own misgivings shouldn’t be so much more irritating and scary when it’s Dean voicing them.

“Goddammit, Sam. Even without your soul you were smart enough not to make a deal with him. I know you did some shady things while I was, you know, but shady is one thing and just plain dumb is another.”

 _You should know,_ Sam thinks but doesn’t say. It’s not so much the fratricidal connotations of the Mark of Cain that bother him. Or denotations, Dean and his hammer had been pretty explicit. There’s no subtext there. It’s the sheer idiocy. Dean’s self-destructions are so maddeningly, self-referentially obtuse. 

“It’s not a Mark of Cain thing. It’s not a you thing. It’s not even really a me thing, for that matter. Apparently there are still cosmic powers that don’t give a fuck about us.”

“Good to know,” says Dean.

“It’s neutral,” says Sam, “it’s public service. That’s why I’m doing it.” At least, that’s the one of the leprechaun's arguments that swims to the top of Sam’s mind at the moment. That’s Sam’s methodology, when he’s arguing with Dean. He may look logical from the outside, and it’s not that he doesn’t use logic, but there’s an element of superstition to this seizing of whatever thought is uppermost that he obscurely trusts. Dean plays with stacked decks, but Sam has a rabbit’s foot. That’s how he thinks of it. The younger sibling’s eternal quest for fairness, probably, whatever else they’ve got going. Sometimes, Sam suspects, he and Dean do achieve banality. Look at them now. They have a home and pets they disagree about.

For that matter, the Mark is almost like a pet. A difficult one that the shelter won’t take back. Sam sometimes wonders if Dean holds onto it because of that, in a bid to keep them together. Have a baby, save the marriage. It’s a crazy idea, but Sam can’t quite shake it off. Dean will keep him by force or subterfuge, that much is plain. He can’t grasp that that won’t work. You don’t get to have what you take. That sounds like a moralistic truism, but it’s more of an actual truth. Sam had learned it when he’d taken power. That’s something he won’t be allowed to have again, he’s robbed himself of it. Dean’s going to have to learn it about Sam. Gadreel hidden in Sam’s body, shuffling through Sam’s thoughts in search of something to say that would fly with Dean, that changed things. There are things Sam couldn’t give Dean now if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to.

Dean won’t admit to that, because he’s afraid if he opens his eyes and looks around he’ll see it’s the end of the world. Dean doesn’t have as much experience of fucking up as Sam has. He doesn’t get how when you’ve fucked up and ended the world parts of it turn out to be all right. You stumble on them, pockets of space that are just fine. It’s like people who had their houses blown up in the blitz, finding, like, a glass case full of stuffed hummingbirds unbroken in the ruins, at its ease like it still had the whole room and house around it. There are bits of Sam and Dean, their whatever-they-have, that are shiny and whole, despite all that Sam’s done, all that Dean did. They can have pets. They don’t need some fucked up Mark.

Maybe Dean will figure it out eventually. To be honest, Sam’s still angry enough not to want to explain it for him. Also, Dean would probably look at him funny if he came out with the glass case of stuffed hummingbirds image. It’s not like Sam knows how these things turn up in his head. He can’t be held responsible. He probably saw it in a picture somewhere, in a book in one of those dinky, small-town libraries he’d crawled around as a kid. _We Were There at the Battle of Britain_.

There’s an obstinate silence. The blue and yellow parrot bird climbs down Sam’s arm, then up again. It peers into his eye, so close he flinches from its beak. “You put your love in an aqua plant that has neither force nor soil to grow,” it says in a conversational squawk.

“Good to know,” says Sam, echoing Dean. Always echoing Dean, dammit. But apparently the latest inscrutable piece of faerie parrot wisdom is enough to convince Dean.

“Do they need, uh, litter? Birdseed?” he asks. Because Dean’s nothing if not pragmatic. And because if these creatures are going to be living here, in the bunker, in his brother’s hair, Dean’s going to care if they have litter, or catfood, or birdseed, or whatever. He’s going to care. 

Dean. Sam will never get away from it. It’s what he’s got. Family. Love. Drooling on the hearthrug and guarding the gates of the underworld so Sam can’t get through. Coming after him with a hammer. Buying litter for his hair-pets, if they need it. Being eaten by that nasty pet of his own he’s got on his arm.

“I don’t think so,” says Sam. “I think they’re good with a few exotic temporal energies.”

“Guess your exotic temporal energies bring all the birds to your yard,” says Dean, and snickers.

So Sam’s nesting at last. Apparently all he needed was to be the nest. Domestication. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Faerie may get off on its own strangeness, just look at that fucking show-off leprechaun, but somehow Sam’s become a natural environment to something. Not a custom-built vessel, but a symbiotic happenstance.

How it works for Sam is a whole series of questions. It’s a test: can he feel hands (paws, claws) clutch at him without panic locking his throat? It’s a game, a tangent from commitment. As long as there’s a talking bird around, it’s always possible this isn’t real. For all the stomach-dropping terror of that thought (there it is, the panic; he did fine with the lizard’s tail looping around his throat, but now his breathing is shutting down, his heart heaving against the wall of the chest, his vision tunneling; but that’s a game, too, his panic is playing him) — anyway, for all the terror of that thought there’s a seduction to it as well. Sam can always escape into the labyrinth of tunnels under the bunker. They’re endless, though there’s no way out. Dean can’t find him there.

It’s a little like having Lucifer in his head, without the ugly intimacy. He looks at the furry guinea pig thing grooming industriously on his desk, at the bright parrot bird arranging the hairs it’s stolen in a uselessly tiny nest, at the litter of thorny, flowering pins the gnomes left beside his computer. They’re outside, that’s the thing. They’re outside. He could wring their necks if he had to. (It’s not shocking any more, knowing what he’s capable of.) He couldn’t get rid of Lucifer, but he could dispose of these things.

Sometimes in those months between Sucracorp and Riot, when the Impala’s tank was full, Sam had felt an absolute elation, knowing exactly how many hours he could go without stopping now, knowing that at any time he could take the turnoff, sliding down the bank of the river, smashing into the oncoming headlights. He’d take them with him, but there was something to be said for that. Sam wasn’t sure he had enough mass by himself to be a real death, an ugly death. Though maybe any solid object would make it real. He could go out against a tree in scarred bark and splintered wood and oily fire. He had those thoughts. They ran beside him, reliably there at a constant distance, like the painted lines of the highway dividers. He’d put his phones away. He’d really done that. The rest he wouldn’t do. This is a bit like that. He could break the monkey thing’s scrawny neck. As long as he knows that he can he probably won’t.

He finds himself explaining all this to them. Nine weeks, and that’s what he does, talk. That and do useless research on the Mark of Cain. He talks freely, compulsively. Both. It’s because they never try to get into him, because they’re willing to be around without rummaging. It makes Sam positively chatty. And he figures they’d be interested in the neck-breaking thing, and the dog. It’s funny. Something about being chatty.

Back then, on his way to Riot, when he’d checked into motels at midnight, at eleven in the morning, at three in the afternoon (he wasn’t living by any rhythm known to man), he’d started to take his time about it, make small talk with the clerks. He’d felt a small, painful wonder, just from remarking on the drizzle, asking what grade the kids in the snapshots behind the desk were in, telling them he was from Kansas, but he’d gone to school out West, in California, yeah. Near San Francisco. San Francisco’s a beautiful city. Though there are always earthquakes to worry about. Almost all the things Sam had told them were true. If they asked about the car, though, he’d extricate himself and head to his room.

Once the guy at the desk — his name was Steve and he lived with his parents, but he was working his way through school, in accounting (not as boring as it sounds, Steve said, people always think it’s the epitome of boring, but it’s flexible and intricate and it fits together), he wanted to live in New York one day (this was near Albany, he meant the city), but this was a pretty good place to work for now, the owner didn’t mind him writing his papers on the computer, as long as he was alert to customers — so, yeah, one time this guy Steve suggested a drink after his shift, with an appreciative look at Sam’s bare forearms (it must have been summer still, then, Sam had rolled his sleeves up to the elbow) that suggested he wouldn’t mind heading back to Sam’s room after the bar. Steve was almost as tall as Sam, skinny, with a close-cropped afro and a short beard, and his eyes were friendly and intelligent behind his glasses. He’d had big, competent hands, quick on the keyboard. When Sam had first walked into the office he’d been typing in staccato bursts, hitting the keys hard, biting his lip with concentration.

The idea of sex has been appealing, part of the time. Sam used to think about it sometimes while he was driving. Cutting free, floating off, a close warmth tighter than the car.

That was in the abstract. In the concrete Sam had been so abruptly, completely hard that it had felt almost ridiculous. That’s not how Sam generally responds to being invited out for drinks by friendly accountants-in-training. Images had cascaded through his mind, someone held down, him or Steve, it wouldn’t even matter, choking, biting, then the splintering snap of a neck. The whole scene spun out to the end, oily smoke and twisted metal wrapped around a tree.

Sam had lurched back from the desk, scaldingly aware that his hard-on was visible, that Steve was watching him with the beginnings of hurt and contempt. How long had it been, at that point, anyway? That strange UFO-hunter girl, Sparrow, just before the whole getting-his-soul-back-or-not thing had gotten serious. But that had been fine. Nice, even. So the nice guy hadn’t been him, but this guy was.

He’d slammed out of the office and into the car, leaving his credit card in Steve’s hand. (Steve had been predictably honest; the card turned up at the PO Box Sam had given, no note.) A few miles out of town Sam had drawn up by the road and rested his forehead on the wheel. He’d still been painfully hard, but he really, really hadn’t wanted to jerk off.

“Steve must have thought I was a homophobic bastard,” Sam tells the crab thing, “not to mention the world’s worst closet case.” The crab thing is scuttling along the edge of his sleeve. For creatures that are supposed to be mystically drawn to the living deadness of hair, they do range. Though maybe there are tiny temporal traces in his arm hair. No. That line of thought goes bad places. Especially when it comes to crabs. He really needs to stop telling his metaphysical hair pets about his sex life.

“So if you’re worried about me breaking your neck,” he tells it, —if it has a neck. Sam peers dubiously. Crabs don’t, really, — “or tearing off your claws or something, well. You’re living on my head. I guess you’ve got a right to know what’s in it.”

Then he’d hit Riot. A real accident, a moment’s inattention, nothing to do with thought. Sam had wondered about that, admittedly, but it was Riot who ran out into the road. He been sure at first that he’d done it alone, but he hadn’t, they’d done it together, him and the dog. Riot bleeding in the back seat, in his arms when he handed him off to Amelia. Hot, real blood. Riot had been shivering with shock. Sam had tried to keep him warm. Amelia had yelled at him.

The crab has scuttled back up his neck and into his hair. The monkey thing is taking the captive audience shift now, dangling down beside his face, fiddling with the tiny buttons that hold down his collar.

“She had great hair,” Sam says. He can feel a ghostly tickle from it, thick and silky and curly, can hear her indignant _ouch_ when it had tangled around his fingers. “You guys would have liked her.” It probably wouldn’t have surprised Amelia at all, apart from the supernatural shit part, that Sam would end up with hair pets feeding off his crazed temporal energies. She’d think it was funny. She’d think it served him right, that it was good for him. And she’d be fascinated by them all, how they work. She’d like that humming, tuning up sound the guinea pig thing makes. Sam scritches it, just so he can smile at the thought.

Some people hate having their pets in the room when they have sex. Sam hadn’t minded. It had made Amelia laugh when Riot jumped down from their bed with an affronted thud at Sam’s first moves and withdrawn to his dogbed in the corner. “Some gentleman you are,” she’d said, “you’re embarrassing the dog. He apologizes,” she’d added to Riot. But Sam hadn’t been apologetic, or embarrassed. He’d been grateful. As long as Riot was there, warm breathing fur somewhere in the room, muscles and bones and organs all safely inside (Amelia had sewed him up, neat, competent stitches), as long as he was there Sam wasn’t going to float off or break in two or snap anyone’s neck.

They’re lined up now along his right arm, all nine of them, staring at him. Sam guesses this turn in his stream of consciousness got them concerned.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “You’re not going to need brain bleach. I don’t do that any more.” Sam would make a great Catholic priest these days, if it weren’t for how he feels about God. He can’t touch himself without wondering if there’s someone else in there. He keeps his hands outside the covers, or under the pillow, brushing the warm grip of his gun.

It had been one of the first points Dean raised (it _would_ be), once he was over the whole deals with elves possibility. “So they come in the shower with you?” he’d asked. They do. Sam’s shampoo makes the monkey thing sneeze. The lizard seems to find water soothing; it fastens itself to the tiled wall right by Sam’s head, membranes flicking over its eyes while its throat bobs contentedly. “And how are you supposed to jerk off if you’ve always got the freaky faerie audience?” Dean had demanded next. It may have been a _non sequitur_ or it may have been related. Sam’s not clear whether by Dean’s rules he’s supposed to be jerking off in bed or in the shower. He’s sure there are rules.

It wasn’t an issue for Sam. He hadn’t told Dean that. He’d never hear the end of it.

“It’s really not an issue,” he tells the creatures, “I’m in my crazy cat lady phase. Very single. Singler than single.”

“A spectacle for gods and men,” says the parrot. “Mars and Venus in a net,” says the raven, “come and get it.” The monkey strokes his face.

“No, thanks,” says Sam. He sighs, fiddling with the silver pins on the table. “I guess you wouldn’t understand. You’re outside. I’m sure everyone inside understood in tedious detail.” Even though Gadreel is gone, there’s always going to be the fact that he’d known. He’d known about Steve. He’d known about Amelia, though he’d probably gotten it all wrong, even from inside Sam’s head. Sam’s sorry Gadreel is dead — the poor bastard had at least been trying to redeem himself — but he’s glad those memories were blown to smithereens.

“I see you’re bonding.” Dean’s voice behind him is remarkably sour. The raven gives a belated, warning caw.

“What are you doing in my room?” Sam says. His heart is pounding. The creatures scatter and scurry back into his hair. He can feel them crouching, hunkering down. He imagines their hearts beating fast with fear also, nine tiny triphammers. This doesn’t have to do with outrage or embarrassment, with what Dean heard (how much did he hear?). It has to do with Dean coming suddenly into a room behind him.

“Your door was open,” says Dean. The silence goes sullen between them. It’s about Amelia and Gadreel and jerking off now, not the threat of a hammer. Sam doesn’t want to deal with it. There’s not much he can say that Dean won’t take as a confession or an accusation. Sam can’t disentangle the two himself. He keeps his eyes fixed on his desk. He wonders how long Dean had stood there listening, what he heard. When he learned to move that noiselessly.

The anger drains slowly out of Dean. Sam can feel it. He imagines he can sense the dregs in a black, ugly pulse from Dean’s arm. Dean clears his throat.

“Look,” he says, “Sammy. I’m probably the last guy on earth you want to bring any of this, uh, stuff to. But if you ever want . . .” Sam spins his desk chair and stands up in a wave of fury, in Dean’s face. Because fuck him. Fuck him.

“You’re right,” he says, cold as cold iron, cold as he can make it, “you are the last fucking person on earth I want to talk to about any of it. Get out. And close the door behind you.”

Dean’s shoulders slump, hurt and embarrassment and defeat.

“All right, all right,” he says. “You just talk to your faerie monkey. That sounds rude. I guess it’s really not, though.” He eyes Sam with dogged, impervious, intrusive concern. Fuck him, Sam thinks, but it’s tired now, fainter. He doesn’t have the heart to snap again, even if Dean still deserves it. Only Dean would think that if he could just invade Sam’s privacy _more_ he could fix things.

“I’m fine, Dean,” he says, “really. I’m OK. Anyway, I think the pet therapy is helping.” He’s not just saying that, he realizes, not just making a joke in some lame half-apology, to get Dean off his back. People always say having a cat or a dog lowers your blood pressure and shit. Gives you a longer life expectancy, though that’s not high on the list of things Sam wants.

Dean nods. They look at each other for a moment. OK. Not OK. OK. Then Dean leaves. The creatures creep back out, one by one.

Sam had talked to Riot, too, but not like this. He thinks it’s something to do with memory. The Leprechaun said they wouldn’t take memories away, but he hadn’t said anything about bringing stuff back. That’s not quite it, though. Maybe they’ve been eating away at the cracks between one time and the next, and the levels are starting to drift into place. Sam feels himself knitting together in a series of subliminal tremors, the grate of tectonics. He shouldn’t have yelled at Dean.

It’s funny. Sam doesn’t start getting morning wood again or anything. He certainly never makes a move south. And if anything the small bodies around him when he’s falling asleep become less insistent, more innocuous. He’d had a few nightmares at first, his brain, the part that was tuned in the Pit, twisting the prickle of the raven’s claws on his chest into a woodpecker drilling out his heart, but now he drifts off to busy, impersonal hands braiding his hair, his body safe and tethered. He never thinks any more _I could snap your neck._

A couple of days later there’s a new tangle of silver gnome sculptures on his desk. Sam picks them up and then puts them down hastily. They’re as non-representational as ever, but caught in their twists Sam sees the generous curve of a woman’s hip, the lean line of a man’s thigh, Amelia’s hair curling over his chest, Steve’s long fingers striking hard at the keys. The pins prick his fingers like thorns. He’s not sure what to do with this.

Well, presumably most people aren’t sure what to do when the gnomes that live in their hair make them erotic paperclip chains as a therapeutic gesture. It’s not like Sam missed a crucial page of the etiquette manual. He thinks maybe what he should be is grateful.

He wears some of the more innocuous pins in his hair. And he leaves the twists and loops and braids in when he goes down to breakfast. It’s partly for the gnomes and the monkey thing, to show them he appreciates their efforts, but it’s mostly for Dean. A conciliatory gesture. They communicate in code as much as the gnomes do. Dean rises to the occasion with ready mockery.

“No, really. It’s sweet that they made you accessories. And I like the braids. Sort of a Thorin Oakenshield look. You just need to shrink three or four feet and grow a beard.”

“Just as I feared, just as I feared, just as I feared,” squawks the parrot.

“Fuck you,” Sam says happily, impartially, to Dean and the parrot.

“New rule,” says Dean, “no rhyming before breakfast.” The parrot says something that’s probably _motherfuckers_ in Elvish, but it doesn’t rhyme. There’s silence for a little while, edged with small sounds: Dean chewing, the percolator bubbling and wheezing, the subliminal, imagined noise of nine faerie creatures eating time, like sheep grazing. Not that Sam’s ever heard sheep graze.

Nine weeks.

Sam is walking down a hallway at this point, asleep or awake, deep under the bunker. The narrative has become retrospective. That’s another thing that happens, he guesses, when he’s infested with time-weavers and time-eaters. He’s on his way to give them back. Regret twists in him, though it’s distant down here. The warmth and tug and tangle of their presence, their rambling, one-way conversations, the gnomes’ whole disturbing gift culture thing, he’s not sure he’s ready to give it up. He knows they need to be released into the faerie ecosystem to keep the world from ending or something, but it didn’t sound urgent. Maybe he could take another batch to endue with temporal energies or whatever and just keep these. He’d be sure not to get attached to the second batch. He wouldn’t talk to them.

The corridor branches three ways. The birds flit a ways down the rough, steep branch that slopes up, the gnomes jump out to tap at the stone of the branch that’s broad and smooth, but Sam whistles them back and takes the branch that turns a corner, the bend in the road. The lizard thing and the crab thing and the monkey thing and the guinea pig thing stick with him.

The barbershop pole is twisting gaily. Sam hears the squawks and squeals and the busy snip of scissors from outside the door, but when he goes in the cages are empty and there are no customers in the barber’s chairs. The only sound is the jangle of the bell. The leprechaun is holding his scissors, but the blades are rusty and dull. There’s a green and gold light spilling from the door at the back where the sinks are, though, and flowering tendrils are reaching up the doorjambs and across the floor, snaking towards Sam’s ankles.

“ _Great_ style on you,” says the leprechaun. He’s staring at Sam’s chest. Sam looks down. He’s wearing the gnomes’ erotic paper clip chains in shiny loops, like necklaces.

“Goddammit,” mutters Sam. “I don’t suppose you’d take all three gnomes?” Sam’s joking, really. He doesn’t mean to have favorites. Though he wants to hang on to the guinea pig thing as long as possible. He feels instantly horrible when the gnomes hop down, one after another, clutching their bags of tools. They bow to Sam.

“It’s up to you. Their craft is welcome among the folk,” says the leprechaun.

“Wait,” says Sam, “I didn’t . . .” but the gnomes are gone, lost in the tangle of vines and the spangle of light.

“Shit,” says Sam. “Could you tell them I said goodbye? Tell them thank you. Really. Tell them I appreciate it.”

“You could always come away with them,” says the leprechaun, “to the waters and the wild. Though I’m not offering to hold your hand, myself. But you’ve done our realms a favor. And if you want to tourney with your lovers, break one another’s necks and hearts in the lists, and then sing like a cageful of songbirds with them over your wine, I can take you where you can play that game at your leisure. Or fall in love again.”

For a moment the vines cling and circle up Sam’s legs, up his spine, finger curiously along his groin, loop around his wrists. For the first time in what feels like (has been) years, his cock stirs. A man who isn’t Steve, a knight of ghosts and shadows, holds a sword to his throat, smiling, ready to draw the first bead of blood. A woman who isn’t Amelia (Amelia’s face was never so blandly, serenely beautiful) is kneeling by a stream, her soaked skirts clinging to her legs as she tugs determinedly, drawing up rushes and flags by their dripping roots. The branches are skipping with squirrels and monkeys and talking birds. Somewhere in the vague background, out in the hallway, is Dean. He’s playing an old-fashioned arcade pinball game. His sleeves are rolled up and the Mark glows on his arm. He doesn’t turn around to look at Sam. All his attention is on the spinning silver ball.

Sam’s dizzy. He’s not sure if he’s a reed by the river, a sword to the heart, the spinning ball.

But he remembers what the leprechaun had said, before. It’s OK to owe Faerie a favor. Being paid back for one, that’s not so good. Anyway, he doesn’t want vision. He wants things. And hey, only some of them are impossible. He’d like to show Amelia around the dream pet shop and see her go all Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, bonding with the critters, figuring them out. That’s not going to happen, but it’s not impossible. He wants to get that Mark off Dean.

“No,” he says. “I mean, thanks, but no. I don’t think that’s me.”

He’ll stay and Dean will lie to him and be obstinate and everything will always have happened. Probably the time will come round again when he’ll find himself lying to Dean. He’ll poke about in the rubble and unearth a souvenir ashtray or a tableau of taxidermied frogs fighting a duel. Dean may even take up antiquing himself. They’ll have pets. Sam may never jerk off again.

“Your choice,” says the leprechaun, “your loss. You’ll have to deal with Death. Take that as ambiguously as you like. No doubt he’ll be glad to see you. You’re his white-haired boy.” He snaps his fingers and it’s gone, the shop, the barber’s pole, the vines, the cages.

“So I guess we’re expecting Death next,” says Sam around a mouthful of toast. That doesn’t sound morbid at all. Still, they’re Winchesters. Death tends to be the anticlimax of their stories. “Look, I don’t know if I have any leverage with this whole thing. The leprechaun sure didn’t seem to see it that way. But I think I should ask. We should ask if he’ll help with the Mark.”

“I’ll ask,” says Dean, “you stay out of it.” Evidently Dean’s in the shoving Sam away stage of being clingy.

Death is in the library when they come up from breakfast. He’s taken the best chair.

“Dean,” he acknowledges, “Sam. You know why I’ve come, of course. Not the obvious, this time. Though my offer stands, Sam.”

“He doesn’t want your fucking offer,” says Dean.

“Sam can speak for himself on the matter,” says Death. “But I’d prefer to deal with the fae creatures first. That business, believe it or not, involves issues more far-reaching than your infinitesimal emotional turmoil.”

Maybe Dean knows better than to argue that one with Sam standing right there, or maybe it’s Death he’s prudent about. For all they’re junk food buddies, Death’s the only supernatural being Sam’s seen Dean treat with genuine awe. Anyway, he lets the thing go.

“Before you get to your crazy cat lady stuff with Sammy, I’d like a word,” he says, but now he’s speaking calmly, not the panicked laying down the law thing he does when it’s about Sam.

“You may have a strictly limited number of words. Don’t make me regret it. I will be with you in a moment, Sam. Don’t go too far.”

“Sam can stay,” says Dean. Gee, thanks. But it is a kind of trust.

“Your turn, then, Dean,” says Death. “Succinctly, please. Give me the elevator pitch.”

“Look,” says Dean. “I know you’ve done a lot for us and I know you’re not in the business of granting favors, but we’ve got a situation here.”

“The Mark of Cain,” says Death. “That was singularly foolish of you, Dean.”

“Yeah, I figured that out, thanks,” says Dean.

“Rather too late,” says Death. “I can’t reverse time, and I don’t waive consequences. In fact, you might say I collect them. I’m something of a connoisseur. I won’t pretend that seeing you acknowledge the concept at last doesn’t gratify me. You might recall I tried to make a similar point to you some time ago. I have neither the desire nor the ability to rescue you now.”

“So I’m fucked,” says Dean, “and whatever poor bastards I end up killing are just more work for you and the undertaker.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” says Death. “I’m afraid you are still very much encumbered with the possibility of being a good person.”

Dean shoots Sam an accusing look, like he suspects Sam and Death have been conspiring to put this on him. Sam shrugs.

“Good luck, Dean” says Death. “On to business. Sam.”

Well, that went well. But Sam hadn’t really expected to produce a solution to the Mark of Cain out of this hat. (What, was he going to pull it out along with some kind of faerie hair bunny?) This was supposed to be a public service.

“Which . . .,” Sam begins, but the crab thing is already edging sideways down his arm, waving fronds and antennae. OK. It’s evidently taken a liking. Sam can see how they might go together, a cold, quick thing that moves sideways and Death.

Death smiles his wintry smile and strokes the shell. The crab falls to the floor with a crack. Its neat, busy legs look messy and disjointed in death. 

Maybe Sam had been distracted by the thing with Dean. But it was stupid, it was really goddamn fucking stupid that Sam hadn’t realized what it meant, Death collecting his share. It had fit well, in Sam’s imagination, Death with a bird on his shoulder or a monkey-gnome riding along on the head of his walking stick. But that wasn’t what the leprechaun had meant. Of course that wasn’t what the leprechaun had meant.

Death is putting the corpse carefully away in his pocket, next to a big, gold watch. Sam backs away. He set them up. He’s fed them and talked to them and now he’s handing them over to be killed. He’s not sending them home, he’s not keeping them, he’s giving them the big Nothing.

“You killed it,” he says. “God damn it, why did you have to kill it?” He’s choked up. It’s intensely, ridiculously painful. He can tell it’s out of proportion — Christ, he’s lost Dean a hundred and four times, a dead crab is nothing. Then again, he’d reread all of Harry Potter while he and Amelia were moving into the house, and he’d lost it at Hedwig. _Hedwig._ Maybe it was because of Riot, thumping his tail across Sam’s page to annoy him while he read. Or maybe Sam’s sense of proportion is fundamentally out of whack, just like his fucking temporal energies that he’s been fucking fattening things for the slaughter with.

Death looks, if it’s possible, startled. So Sam can surprise Death. Good for him.

“What did you expect, Sam? Faerie is in the business of endless cycles, of putting things back. I’m not. I take things out.”

“I thought you’d keep them. I thought you just wanted the time stuff. I mean, they’re from faerie, right? You don’t have to kill them. They’re, like, exempt.”

“No one is exempt. I can’t take time without life, not here. In Faerie, yes, but you chose to stay here. Two more, Sam.”

“But they’re sentient. The gnomes make things.” Though the gnomes are all safe and sound in fairyland, Sam had seen to that, accidentally. “The birds talk.”

“A tiny but vocal minority of the beings I reap do that, yes. It’s a little more interesting than overseeing the mortality of mosquitos, but not such a stunning achievement as you seem to rate it.”

“What if I won’t? What if I won’t give the other two to you?” This has to be the most futile gesture of Sam’s lifetime. It’s not like he can stop Death. But Death tilts his head at him calmly, picks up his cane.

“Nothing will happen. Nothing will happen to you or them, at least. No one will come after you. I certainly won’t, except in the ordinary course of business. A balance of power too abstract for you to grasp will be disturbed, with consequences that won’t be visible till billions upon billions of years past your speck of a lifetime. Vastness is trivial to mortals, Sam. It’s not a totally unsympathetic paradox. The choice is entirely yours.”

Sam looks at Dean. Dean shrugs helplessly. He never will step in when Sam actually asks him to intervene in his choices, god knows, though he’s happy enough to take over uninvited. Not that Sam can blame him. It’s got to look pretty stupid to an observer (like, say, Death), him and Dean consulting each other on ethics. Like two drunks at a party figuring out which one should drive. They’re both too smashed to be behind the wheel. Come to think of it, that’s probably a scene that plays out quite frequently for Death’s amusement.

“Are you sure you aren’t just in my head?” he asks Death. That’s always the doubt, isn’t it? Maybe Sam was dreaming all along. Maybe this whole allegorical drama was supposed to be instructive in some way. He doesn’t want to choose death for something that trusts him in the service of allegory.

“You had better hope not. I don’t think the realms of Faerie had any interest in negotiating with the figments of your dubious sanity. And I don’t care for roommates, let alone the tenement’s worth you keep in there. I am quite real.”

Sam stands for a moment. Then he steps forward, closes his eyes, bows his head. A coolness goes past his cheek. The tug of claws in his hair relaxes. There’s a squawk, cut off. One of the birds. “One more, then,” says Death, and reaches again. This time Sam can’t not look. He opens his eyes on blurry fur and the guinea pig thing’s face. It doesn’t look peaceful or magical. It just looks dead, eyes fixed and betrayed, tongue lolling over its teeth in its half open mouth. Sam could have asked Death not to take that one. Death might have been OK with that. It’s not like the cosmic order or whatever depends on which goes where.

Death puts the small, limp body away. Sam sits down in the nearest chair. It’s over. He should have gone to fairyland where this stuff doesn’t happen.

“Wait, what about the last three?” he asks. _Three for the memory of Time,_ the leprechaun had said. He’s probably where the birds got their helpful conversational style. The bird.

Death is looking at him with familiar, dry, disconcerting kindness.

“Since you were the one who killed Chronos, perhaps you should take responsibility for them. I’m certainly not going to.”

“And you can’t help Dean,” says Sam.

“Dean can help Dean,” says Death. “Possibly you can help Dean. At the very least, you can surely keep three pets alive. You might start by not letting your brother take a hammer to your head while they’re using it. Honored though I always am to collect your soul, you might at this point be inconveniencing others.”

Sam doesn’t know what it is about him that makes leprechauns and strange vets and Death foist pets on him.

“So that’s it,” he says.

“Unless you have pizza. Doritos? No? Pity. Goodbye then, Sam. I’ll see you soon.” He picks up his stick and walks off into the shadows in the corner.

“What did he mean, he’ll see you soon?” demands Dean. The library feels empty and stirred up. The lizard wraps its tail around Sam’s wrist. Sam strokes it. It’s not the guinea pig thing. There’s no discordant, tuning up hum. But it wedges its head against his knuckles and Sam imagines that its gold-slitted eye is affectionate. “Hey,” he says to it. He doesn’t want to answer Dean’s question. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t feel like getting into an argument.

Dean looks at him and lets the matter go.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. “About how things turned out. I know you, uh, bonded. But you have still got three of them. They can come in the car if they want. Don’t poop,” he adds. Sam assumes that last bit isn’t addressed to him. There’s a beak preening the hair behind his ears. Sam lifts a hand and it hops on so he can see it. The raven. He imagines how still the blue and yellow parrot plumage must have gone, while Sam kept his eyes closed like a coward. So. Lizard, raven, monkey face. If he hadn’t liked the gnomes least, if he hadn’t got greedy, he might have sent the guinea pig thing back home to faerie. Though surely the gnomes deserved to live, too. They made him silver pins for his hair.

“Hand to mouth and void with shame, no luck to you,” says the raven, staring challengingly at Dean.

“We break a lot of mirrors,” Dean answers, “We’re used to bad luck. You’re still not pooping in my car.”

“It’s good luck,” says Sam, “bird droppings are good luck in the lore.”

“Not in the goddamn car they aren’t,” says Dean. The raven seems to accept that. It hops back into Sam’s hair.

“I’m sorry Death wouldn’t help with the Mark,” Sam says in turn. “The whole thing accomplished fuck all, didn’t it?”

“Hey, the balance of the universe, billions and billions of years beyond our puny lives,” Dean intones, “doesn’t that give you the warm fuzzies?” Sam produces a smile of sorts. Dean claps his shoulder and wanders tactfully off. Sam just sits there.

The gods they’ve met eat people. The Mark’s eating Dean. Death has been kind to Sam, in his way, and he’s not a cannibal or an invader (though Sam still remembers the animal fear and the pain when Death forced his soul through his ribs; Death’s been inside him, too), but he can’t do anything for Sam but take him away. Heaven is nothing but lost time. Here on earth Sam can go on being an ecosystem. Something can get some use out of his stupid, accidental life. And maybe he can work his way back to love or lust or whatever. Not by being pulled in and bound with faerie vines, but like the gnomes did it, intricate, fiddly labor and haphazard, embarrassing results. He’s got one of the paperclip sculptures in his pocket, wire limbs fiercely twined. Maybe one day he’ll talk about some of it to Dean.

It’s not hopeless. Some obnoxious future Dean may get to tell a bunch of schoolgirls, young, hopeful eager beavers who think that Winchester lives mean something and that it’s worth getting the lighting right, that what happened next was that he got the Mark of Cain off his arm and Sam adopted hair pets.

“Come on,” he says to the monkey thing. It’s dangling from his ear. It tickles. “Research time.” The monkey likes research. Looks like Sam’s going to be spending a lot of his future life keeping it from tearing out pages and making spitballs.

Sam wakes next morning in his bed. No branching corridors. Before he opens his eyes, he remembers. It could have been a dream. Maybe it was all a dream, all of it, right from the branching tunnel and the barber’s pole down to what happened in the end. Maybe he’s asleep behind the encyclopedias in some small-town library. He lies there weighing the gains and losses — does he want it to have been a dream? — in the dark behind his eyelids.

Then he feels the tugging weights in his hair. Too light, too few, but there.


End file.
